What You Can Learn from the Top 50 Infographics of 2014

You know that infographics are a great way to get exposure for your brand or business. But you may wonder what types of infographics get the most engagement. In this post, are going to analyze the top most shared infographics published in 2014 to give you an idea of what infographics have what it takes to go viral.

Total Shares

First, let’s look at the social sharing stats for the top infographics of 2014. Social sharing stats compiled using BuzzSumo.

As you can see from the data above, infographics that tend to go viral get shared the most on Facebook, and then Pinterest. Hence, if you want your infographic to get shared, be sure to have at minimum a Facebook Like and Pinterest Pin It button on your infographic pages.

Also, it’s important to note that the majority also specifically have the word infographic in the title of the page. This way, when the page is shared, people know that the page contains an infographic.

Topics

Fifteen out of the top fifty most shared infographics were health related. Business, career, and corporate infographics made up the next popular topic area. Additional topics include general knowledge and education, languages, regional, current events, food, entertainment, and sports.

Are these topics the only ones that have the chance to go viral? OF course not. But if you are in an industry that can create an infographic in these categories, you stand a good shot of achieving viral infographic fame.

Sources

Are the creators of viral infographics the ones who reap the rewards? Not always. Infographics are often republished by other websites, and sometimes those are the ones that receive the lion’s share of social shares.

For example, the most shared infographic on diseases we donate to versus diseases that kill us generated over 300k social shares when published on iflscience.com. The original article the infographic was published in on vox.com, on the other hand, only netted a total of 17k shares. The same goes for the third most popular infographic on your rights when pulled over by a police officer. On theblaze.com, the infographic received 100k shares, whereas the original on online-paralegal-programs.com received 16k shares.

Design

Most of the top infographics contain informative data displayed in a clean, simple design. For example, here’s the most shared infographic on diseases we contribute to versus those that kill us.

And here’s a more fun, cartoon-styled infographic from healthworks.my. They even went to the trouble of creating a kid-friendly version of the infographic that leaves out the colorful language of the original.

Interactive infographics are also on the rise. The BBC’s Your Life on Earth uses your birth date, gender, and height to display data on how the earth has changed in your lifetime.

Simpler infographics contained in one image file will generally be more beneficial as they are easier to share from one website to the next. On the other hand, because you can’t share an interactive infographic like the one from the BBC, it will attract more links, social shares, and traffic.

The Infographics

Last, but not least, here are the top 50 most shared infographics for your viewing pleasure.